Grissom comes after Green
by justincbenedict
Summary: Two of the passengers on the Jailbird plane reunite in Vegas. But there's a surprise in store!


September, 1973

Garland ambled up to the strange boy leaning against the Coke Machine on the West Yard of the Utah Industrial School for Boys. The other kid looked at Garland and smirked. "Yeah?"

"Uh, I wanted to thank you for getting those guys off me yesterday. You might've hit Fanucci a little hard, though. But hey, it was awfully decent of you. I'm small."

The other boy ran a casual hand through his close cropped hair. Garland noticed he was the only kid here wearing sunglasses, which were usually prohibited at this juvenile prison.

"You don't remember me, do you Green?" The boy pushed his shades up on his forehead. "We went to elementary school together for first and part of second grade? Green, right ahead of Grissom…alphabetical, you remember?"

Garland's memory of childhood was vague but…"You left in the middle of the year, right? Something about the janitor dying?"

Grissom let the sunglasses drop onto his eyes again. One of the counselors looked over at the two boys, and then looked away again, and Grissom smiled.

"Yup. The janitor, who touched my little sister and two of her friends, and didn't get fired for it…no one cares about white trash children, but our custodial boy was found in the boiler room with his throat cut, and the letter opener belonged to my mom…I guess I shouldn't have just dropped it afterwards."

"You went to jail for killing the janitor?" Garland asked, incredulously. "What were you, seven? We're fifteen now…" But Grissom looked like a very short old man…not fifteen at all.

"Naw, they couldn't totally prove anything, but we had to transfer schools. But other people have grievously annoyed me…I have poor impulse control, the docs say, and since they found my step-daddy in a wood-chipper, I've been languishing here at Utah Industrial. Shame, isn't it?"

Garland was fairly bright, but was having a bit of trouble following Grissom's patter. However, as he stood by Grissom, everyone else seemed to be leaving the two of them alone.

"Someone told me that you're in here for killing cats, Garland, it sure seems like kind of a hefty sentence, as this is the maximum security juvie joint in the state."

Garland grinned. "Yeah, but one of those cats belonged to a Provo councilman's daughter. It's not like I didn't give the girl a nice little throw rug back for her room."

Cyrus Grissom threw his head back and laughed loudly.

May, 1997

Garland left Harrah's after his last roll. It was nightfall, and Garland would have been worried that all the police action outside, what with the prison plane having ruptured along the Las Vegas Strip, would create problems, as he was quite the wanted man.

But Garland had followed a chubby blonde croupier (or was it a blackjack dealer, a broad in a tux, basically) into the Ladies, and he'd come out wearing the skin of her face over his own. He was still in his own clothes, so he supposed he looked like a lesbian, and, just after he turned on a more private avenue, he dropped her moldering epidermis down a sewer.

Garland had had $600 in his rectum when he'd boarded the prison plane, and he'd won a couple of roulette wheel turns…A basically honest man, Garland Green would never stoop to stealing. Now, with about fifteen hundred in his pocket, Garland figured he had to find lodgings for the night. Could he risk his face being seen?

Suddenly there was a whisper from an alley. "Garland! Hey!"

Garland turned around and Sweet Jesus, there was Cyrus Grissom.

"I thought you died after the escape, Cy." Garland looked at Cyrus with amazement. Only the good die young, he thought. After he and Cyrus had reunited during the hijacking of the jailbird plane, they'd not said much to anyone else about the fact that they were old friends…

Garland had been somewhat relieved when he'd heard that Cy had died, much as he owed him—Cyrus "The Virus" was a bit of a loose cannon. But now he grinned inadvertently…you'd expect Cy to be covered with blood, and wearing the state's threads, but apparently Cy had come across some money, too.

"Nice suit there, Cy." Garland admired it. Cy was resplendent in an Armani with a bright blue tie that looked like one Garland had seen one summer when working at Rogers Peet while he'd been in mortuary school.

Cy pointed to a bloody leg in the alley. "He was a degenerate gambler, and thought I could give him a ten-spot. And then he tried to mug me. The guy was obviously a businessman, but too desperate for good sense, and of course I was desperate, too, right?"

Garland laughed, and shook his head. I guess we all pay for our sins, no matter how poorly the sins are acted out, the poor bastard.

"So we're both free, so far, right?" Garland asked, watching Cy toy with a diamond tie pin on the necktie. Jeez, if the guy had thought if it, he could have pawned that, instead of trying to rip off Jack Abbott from Hell.

"Yeah, they thought they got me, but no go. I'm a little annoyed that Cinitas's plan didn't work out for us. It would've been nice to be on a tropical island, but I guess I counted my Pina Coladas a little early."

Garland snorted. "You'd have gotten bored, Cy. Don't tell me the reason you're a mass murderer or even why I am has anything to do with getting lots of money and chicks. We'd have come back to raise a little Cain here, don't you think?"

Cyrus shrugged. "I know I'm the one with all the good lines, Garland, but I have no idea what to do now…would've liked to have knocked off Poe and that idiot agent Larkin, but that can wait for another day, I guess."

But as the two began walking out of the alley, gunshots cried out. Garland and Cy went down in a hail of bullets. At the end of the alley, little Casey Poe handed the Glock back to her mother, who said to Daddy Cameron, "Isn't that great? She's been skeet shooting since she was three."


End file.
